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Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Vatican City, 29 July 2015 (VIS) –
The African Year of Reconciliation, convoked by the Symposium of
Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), opens today
with a solemn celebration in Accra, Ghana. It will focus on the theme
“A Reconciled Africa for Peaceful Co-existence”, and will
conclude on 29 July 2016 during the SECAM 17th Plenary Assembly, to
be held in Angola. The SECAM was instituted by Blessed Paul VI in
1969 during his pastoral visit to Uganda, and comprises 37 national
episcopal conferences and eight regional conferences.

The initiative responds to Pope
emeritus Benedict XVI's 2011 invitation to the African episcopates in
his post-Synodal apostolic exhortation “Africae Munus” to
“promote a continent-wide Year of Reconciliation to beg of God
special forgiveness for all the evils and injuries mutually inflicted
in Africa, and for the reconciliation of persons and groups who have
been hurt in the Church and in the whole of society”. This would be
“an extraordinary Jubilee Year during which the Church in Africa
and in the neighbouring islands gives thanks with the universal
Church and implores the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially the gift
of reconciliation, justice and peace”. The exhortation, signed by
Benedict XVI on 19 November in Cotonou, Benin, during his apostolic
trip to the country, followed the Second Extraordinary Assembly for
Africa of the Synod of Bishops held in the Vatican in 2009 on the
theme “The Church in Africa in the service of reconciliation,
justice and peace”.

The archbishop of Accra, Charles Palmer
Buckle, on behalf of the president of SECAM, Bishop Gabriel Mbilingi,
C.S.Sp., of Lubango, Angola, has sent a letter to all the African
episcopal conferences, inviting them to organise programmes and
initiatives on reconciliation throughout the year, in collaboration
with the commissions of Justice and Peace in their countries. He also
encouraged the bishops of the continent to carry out a special
collection on a Sunday of their choice for the second SECAM Day. The
Day was instituted two years ago by the association's 16th Assembly
in order to finance evangelisation projects, the promotion of justice
and peace, and the Catholic media.